At a press conference marking 100 days into his second term in office, President Barack Obama said, “What’s happening in Syria is a blemish on the international community.”

It’s true. International cooperation is nearly absent.

Meanwhile, 70,000 Syrian citizens have been killed, many in the most brutal ways. Syrian President Bashar Assad’s air force has bombed citizens waiting for bread outside bakeries. His army’s snipers have picked off children.

And Syria may be a portent of things to come: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres recently told a Washington, D.C., audience: “We are unprepared for what is to come. ... The international community has lost its ability to stop conflict. ... The very nature of human conflict is changing.” He estimated that 10 million Syrians, half the nation’s pre-war population, will need humanitarian aid.

In dealing with the Syrian civil war, Obama faces a problem he deals with at home: a general unwillingness to cooperate — even for the common good.

China and Russia used their absolute veto in the United Nations to stop U.S.- and Western-led initiatives to place international sanctions on Assad’s regime. No nation wants to intervene militarily, including our ally Great Britain, even though the Arab world is fearful the conflict might spread.

CHAOS AND IRAN

Of course, some see the Syrian chaos as an opportunity. The Iranian regime, no friend of the Arab Spring, has troops in Syria and equips Assad’s army. After Obama spoke, the leader of Lebanon-based Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, said he will not let Syria fall into Israel’s or Islamic radical’s hands. Any land action — other than by people of Nasrallah’s Shia faith — will be met with resistance. London’s Guardian newspaper reports that, together, Iran and Hezbollah have about 50,000 troops in Syria.

Complicating matters further are the rebels themselves. They are but tenuously united, and they’re not all good guys — al-Qaida is active and well-organized among them.

Nor do the rebels have overwhelming support — in fact, a sizable percentage of Syrians support Assad. A new Pew Research poll found that, except for Jordan, Arabs oppose sending military aid to the rebels. And, perhaps understandably, our ally Israel does not want the rebels armed at all.

To his credit, Obama has done his due diligence on the rebels. The CIA has been vetting them to separate the good guys from the bad. It has advised nations funneling weapons to the rebels about whom they shouldn’t arm.

And the president is being proactive. During his press conference, Obama listed a few of his actions taken on Syria. He is organizing the international community; he has made the United States the biggest supplier of non-lethal aid to the rebels; he ordered our ambassador to defy a travel ban and visit the rebels early on; he has applied U.S. sanctions on Syria.

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He has also defined the “red line” — chemical and biological weapons — and what defines crossing it. We still don’t know who used them, in what quantity or when they were used. To mobilize the international community — as well as the American public — Obama knows we cannot have a repeat of Iraq’s missing WMDs.

The red line has become a “red flag” for President Obama’s opponents. Misreading the term — and ignoring the president’s other actions — Sen. John McCain said on NBC’s “Meet the Press”: “The president drew a red line on chemical weapons, thereby giving a green light to Bashar Assad to do anything short of that.”

‘A TRICKY ONE’

Foreign Policy magazine ran an article that anonymously quoted three State Department officials who want Obama to arm the rebels. Yet one admits, “This is a tricky one. And I have a feeling that, like a lot of these things, there is no good answer.”

Yes, it’s tricky because it’s crucial to distinguish between evidence of use of chemical weapons and ironclad proof of who used them. Obama must maneuver between the Scylla of precipitous engagement and the Charybdis of ineffective intervention. Getting control of chemical weapons requires boots on the ground. Stratfor, a private intelligence company, says there are no air strikes that could do the job without ground troops.

Obama is considering arming the rebels. Instead of marching to war, he is working to build an international coalition that will compel Assad to leave. Russia can play a crucial role, just like China in regard to North Korea.

The diplomacy is critical. The administration deserves support, not carping.

Donna Brazile is a senior Democratic strategist, a political commentator and contributor to CNN and ABC News and a contributing columnist to Ms. Magazine and O, the Oprah Magazine.